Loved By The Hero (Hero Romance 3) by Kalena Lyons

Chapter One
     
     
    “It’s been four months. Don’t you think if you’ve been dating a man for four months, your mother ought to have seen and talked to him?” The porch swing eased back and forth with care and Thomas chattered idly as he showed one of the neighborhood kids his new sled. It had snowed about three inches, but it was a heavy, wet snow and they’d get in a few good runs before they had to switch to another sloped area in the yard.
    Elaine wouldn’t pull her eyes off her son as she sipped a mug of hot chocolate laced with some whiskey. Jacob never made it any other way. “She’s already seen and talked to him,” she responded, chancing a glance at her swing companion. His white hair was pulled back and his rheumy eyes were studying her with a mix of amusement and exasperation.
    “You know what I mean, darling. Introduce him as your boyfriend, and not just some man that shows up in a dark car on dark nights and whisks you away to another world for a few hours. I get it. You’re a single mother who needs some fun time,” Elaine’s cheeks grew red and she averted her gaze back to her son fully. “I’m not dead, Elaine. I’m just old.”
    “Oh, Jacob, I know that. It’s just that you’re so much like a grandfather to Thomas, and-” She paused, a little embarrassed about what she was going to say.
    “I’ll never replace your father or a grandfather for Thomas, but I love you both just the same. It still doesn’t make me dead, so I get it. But you can’t just lead this man around forever, Elaine. You’re going to have to introduce him to the family you have. I’ll be waiting by the front door with my shot-gun when you’re ready.” It tickled her from the inside out and she chuckled as she thought about old Jacob sitting by his door with a shotgun in hand. If he’d fire that thing, he’d be blown to Tim-buck-two.
    “I don’t think that’s necessary. He might get the wrong idea,” she said sarcastically. Thomas waved to her and she waved back at the same time that Jacob waved. They sat in silence and sipped their whisky-laced hot cocoa. It was just enough to make her feel warm, but not enough to make her feel that she was being a bad mother.
    “Mom did a reading for me the other night a few months ago.” The words rushed from her like a confession to a priest about murder, and she felt a little embarrassed and guilty for admitting she had allowed a reading to happen.
    It had been haunting her for four months.
    “I know,” Jacob told her as he finished the dredges of his hot cocoa. “More chocolate?”
    “Sure,” Elaine answered as she proffered her cup and watched her son playing in the snow. They were turning over their sleds and packing snow onto the bottoms, most likely to make an igloo. She doubted there was enough snow.
    Jacob retreated from her like he was worried she would say more about the reading, or perhaps ask a question. If he knew about it, then that meant her mother had been worried about it and had talked with him. So if she was worried, should Elaine be worried?
    Or was it her mother being melodramatic like she always was?
    I shouldn’t have brought it up, she thought as she watched with hawk-like eyes. Thomas would be four in six more months, and she’d have to admit that her baby was no longer a baby. His vocabulary had improved drastically over the past few months, and he was already starting to write his name in scribbly crayon.
    Soon he would go off to preschool with the other children and she’d have to wonder what he was doing all day long. She didn’t worry when he was with Jacob because the old man was a responsible as a mother hen, and when he was with her mother, she knew Jacob wasn’t that far away. But she worried about what the other children would say. Maybe they wouldn’t tease him when he was four and they were the same age, but what about when he was six, seven, or even eight? Would they know about what happened to his father and make fun